Sunday, November 11, 2012

"60 Minutes" on November 11, 2012

Morley Safer with David McCullough about history, including the current "ignorance of history" among US young people.

Scott Pelley begins with a story on Belle Harbor, NY, about the fire during Sandy [Breezy Point.] Dennis Brady was away in Florida when Sandy hit NY. Dennis drove straight through 19-20 hours back to NY. 3 Fs: family, friends, faith. The Rockaway Peninsula. McDonald was interviewed. Kenny Dean. Kids used swim kick boards to jump into the flood to avoid the fire. Jim O'Connor: titanic meets gone with the wind. Sean Herrin and James Brennan. Charlie Herrin was a bond trader at the World Trade Center. Harbor Light Pub. Sean Herrin's dad owned the Harbor Light Pub.
Churchill: when going through hell, keep going.

"The skills gap." Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the US but has openings for skilled jobs. Ryan Costella head of strategic initiatives at ClickBond in Carson City, Nevada. Factory in Watertown, CT was bought by ClickBond just to get employees. Costella talked about baby boomers leaving the workforce, who can't be replaced. In 2010, unemployment rate in Nevada went to 14%. Program with 20 handpicked students. Jamie Pacheco was a painter. The jobs start at $12/hour. For Alcoa, the issue is re-training workers. Hiring workers since 1888. CEO Klaus Kleinfeld. Klaus talked about a trade secret. Klaus says manufacturing is paying well. Peter Capelli of UPenn Wharton disagrees. Wages are not going up, and sometimes are declining. Employers are not expecting to hire and train people. It costs $60,000 in Nevada to train 20 students. At the end of their training for 16 weeks, two students were offered jobs paying $12 per hour.

Profile of David McCullough (part 2; previous part on 4 Nov 2012). Americans going to Paris. Began arriving in Paris just 50 years after 1776. In 1830, Samuel Morse was in Paris; dreamt up idea of telegraph while in Paris. Morse met Louis Daguerre. In 1871, Mary Putnam first American to graduate med school (in Paris). 133 years ago, John Singer Sargent painted at Luxembourg Gardens. Augustus St. Gauden. Abraham Lincoln in Chicago. William Sherman in Central Park. Pont des Artes. Charles Sumner at Sorbonne in 1838. Saw blacks treated equally at the Sorbonne. Mark Twain: shocked by the can-can dancers. Charles Rivkin, ambassador to France. Oliva deHaviland (Melanie in Gone with the Wind). History and its lessons are being lost on younger Americans. Historically illiterate. One student did not understand the original 13 colonies were all on the east coast. "Bring back dinner." Need to re-vamp the teaching of the teachers. Teachers should not major in "education;" they need to major in something (eg chemistry). Book "The Great Bridge," from 1972. Endured for 130 years. Who were those guys and how the hell did they do it. Washington Roebling. John Roebling. It's still serving its purpose.

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I'm a patent lawyer located in central New Jersey. I have a J.D. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Stanford University, where I studied graphite intercalation compounds at the Center for Materials Research. I worked at Exxon Corporate Research in areas ranging from engine deposits through coal and petroleum to fullerenes. An article that I wrote in The Trademark Reporter, 1994, 84, 379-407 on color trademarks was cited by Supreme Court in Qualitex v. Jacobson, 514 US 159 (1995) and the methodology was adopted
in the Capri case in N.D. Ill. An article that I wrote on DNA profiling was cited by the Colorado Supreme Court (Shreck case) and a Florida appellate court (Brim case). I was interviewed by NHK-TV about the Jan-Hendrik Schon affair. I am developing ipABC, an entity that combines rigorous IP analytics with study of business models, to optimize utilization of intellectual property. I can be reached at C8AsF5 at yahoo.com.